believe, madam president, there are only three nations on earth where there is evidence of this polio -- nigeria, afghanistan and pakistan. the success of the polio vaccine showed the public what medical research could explish encourage -- accomplish and encourage. yesterday, chairman mikulski of the senate appropriations committee, had a hearing on research and we had some great witnesses. among them, dr. francis collins, who is the head of the national institutenationalinstitutes of . they came to talk about america's investment in research and innovation. you would think that with the success of the salk polio vaccine and all the other things that have followed, that america would have learned a valuable lesson about this investment. but, sadly, today, some 60 years after the discovery of the salk polio vaccine, we are not making progress as we should. in fact, in some respects, we are falling behind. because of our failure to adequately fund the national institutes of health over the last 10 or 12 years, we've seen a 20% decline in the awards for medical research. 20% of worthy research proj